Situation at Portland Hospital
by the m0nk
Summary: Inner City LPCD polieman and his crazed partner respond to a radio call in dowtown Portland...Rated PG-13 for Violence and Possibility of Questions About Human Nature


"Situation at Portland Hospital, all cars Portland area report to situation at Portland Hostpital." The radio blared in the car. It was a pretty slow day so far, but my partner was dying for some action, and for once I could say the same about myself. That's how it goes in this city, all the screwballs start laying off until the end of the week. Then things get hot. It just so happened to be nighttime on a Friday with the moon climbing high over the Liberty City skyline, coaxing all the havoc out of it's borderline denizens. The radio cackled the message again. We didn't even need to call in asking what they meant by "situation". It was like second nature to us. Tim didn't even look at me, he just turned the siren on and slammed his foot onto the accelerator. We took off in a black and white blur. There were some messed up people on the force and Tim was one of them. I'd been a cop for 4 years and his partner for 2 months and already I'd been traumatized. There was this one time Tim caught this kid in an alley after a chase and cornered him between two dumpsters. He told me to go watch the car while he pried the baseball bat from the kid's fingers. Jesus, he wasn't even 20, just some young mind pulled into a mob mentality. The kid was on his knees, pleading with Tim, but Tim just stood there, his huge chest heaving up and down from all the running and his police hat cocked jauntily towards the back of his head. He looked like some twisted Santa Claus in a blue suit as he rolled up his sleeves over his fat hairy arms. He looked down his sweaty nose at the kid as his mustache curled into a grotesque grimace. I went back to the car and listened to the dull smacks of the bat on some inner-city youth, each swing punctuated by his scream for mercy. I sat there paralyzed, flinching with every curse that came from Tim's lips and every bloody cry from the kid's, and when the screams stopped coming, Tim walked back to the car and we drove off like nothing had happened. He was driving like a madman, but we all do that. It's part of our training. They put us in a cop car, have us speed toward a stack of cinder blacks at 80 mph and then tell us whether to turn left or right just before impact. Tim cut a corner by riding over the sidewalk, the car bending the reflection of streetlights as they shot by. He grinned. "The guy sure did pick a dumb place to start some shit!" Tim said, his jowels bouncing with every lurch the car made. He pulled the corner of his brown mustache as he hit the handbrake and cut a 90-degree turn through the shipping yards, then continued. "I mean, if I was a homicidal nutcase I think I'd know not to start a killing spree right next to the police station!" Tim's fat face curled into a smile, as if to punctuate the irony of his statement. He was the most homicidal nutcase I'd met. We pulled onto Main St with the Hospital and Police Station right next to each other at the end of the block. Tim and I both gasped as we saw what the "situation" was. There were flaming police cars everywhere, the street illuminated by their evil glow. The ground was covered in the bodies of either dead or wounded policemen and members of local gangs. It was a full-scale battlefield, complete with grenades exploding and rockets flying and people screaming for medical attention. And at the heart of it all was one guy in a black leather jacket and some cargo khakis, his overgrown sideburns hugging his frown as he stood on top of an overturned SWAT car and emptied a clip of machine gun fire onto the sea of policemen below. We watched with wide eyes as the police force finally got on top of the SWAT car with him, their guns blazing as he jumped off seconds before the car exploded sending their bodies 20 feet into the air. He had seriously killed just about every cop in Portland. Tim's fat fingers grabbed the radio. "Requesting assistance at Portland Hospital!" He screamed, his fingers turning white as they clutched the transmitter. But he knew that all the assistance was already here, and that the FBI wouldn't care until he crossed the Liberty City bridge. I watched as Tim's face grew angry, the primitive aggression brought to a boil. He stepped out of the car. I cocked my gun. We both ran full speed ahead, stepping over bodies and trash and dodging oncoming gunfire to the frontline of police cars. We took cover with 2 other cops and a member of a local Asian gang behind an ambulance. A rocket screamed overhead before it slammed into a LCPD helicopter, causing it to spin out of control into the Police Station. Tim stepped out screaming and let 4 shots fly. One hit the man in the shoulder. He didn't even flinch. Tim cursed. He rolled back behind the ambulance and addressed us. "Ok. He's built himself a barricade of police cars and from what I gather he's stockpiled a lot of ammo." He said, raising his voice over the gunfire in the backround. One of the police officers shouted back. "What the fuck are we supposed to do?!" Tim turned to him. "We get into this ambulance and spearhead it right through his barricade. I'll drive, you guys get in the back. As soon as we crash through everyone hop out and open fire." We all nodded in agreement, even the Triad member. Tim hopped into the front seat and the rest of us climbed though the back doors. The ambulance lurched forward as Tim screamed and cursed, gripping the steering wheel with ferocity. We crashed through two police cars parked next to each other, both of them spinning out of the way. Tim was the only one with a seatbelt on, so the rest of us were thrown to the floor. It was fortunate for us that we weren't still standing because a stream of bullets suddenly pierced through the ambulance, letting little shafts of streetlight in through the jagged bulletholes. As soon as the gunfire stopped the Triad member popped up and jumped out of the back. He let his Uzi loose and it screamed in short interrupted burst as it jumped around in his hand. Tim climbed into the back with us just in time to see the Triad member lifted off the ground with a return of machine gun fire. His lifeless body hit the ground with a dull thud, a cloud of dust lifted up around him. We all lay there on the floor of the ambulance, wondering how we were going to stay alive. I can't really explain what happened next: Tim screamed something while he jumped out of the ambulance and before the other two cops or I had a chance to react there was a bright white flash and a loud noise and the entire ambulance was lifted off the ground. After that everything was quiet and I remember being dazed for a little while with a broken leg on the ceiling of the ambulance. I slowly regained my strength and propped myself up on my bleeding elbow. The front of the vehicle was on fire and the other two cops were very, very dead. I crawled out of the flaming ambulance with my arms dragging my legs behind me, the backs of my hands charred and a sharp pain in my chest when I breathed in. I made it about 8 feet from the ambulance when I realized that Tim and the guy in the leather jacket were fighting in a small clearing. Tim was getting his ass handed to him in clenched fistfuls and the guy didn't look like he was going to stop anytime soon. The weirdest part was that the guy with the jacket didn't say a word. Usually they're screaming their brains out, talking bout how they're on some mission from god or how they're fighting for the good of the people, but this guy didn't even sneeze. I watched Tim get knocked to the ground with a straight punch. He lay there long enough for the guy to pull a bottle of pills out of his pocket and pop two into his mouth. Tim got up and was met by a roundhouse that sent him10 feet into the air. The guy moved with incredibly speed and at the peak of Tim's ascent he shot him twice with a shotgun. Tim fell to the ground and did not get up again. By then I had crawled over to the body of the Triad member. I ignored his blank and lifeless gaze and I pried the Uzi from his cold fingers. I rolled over and with all the strength left in me I raised the gun to the guy's head as he stood over the body of Tim. I coughed up a little blood and said "Freeze asshole." The guy spun around. I must've been a pitiful sight: bruised and bleeding with a compound exposed fracture and a smear of blood following me from the flaming ambulance, holding up a shaking gun in his direction. He walked over to me slowly. His head eclipsed the streetlight above us and I saw all the bruning cars around us reflected in his eyes, their yellow glow playing off of his body. I sucked in a breath as I trained the gun between his eyes and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked, announcing to the man and I that it was out of ammo. My hand went loose and the Uzi slid out of my bloody grip. I looked up at him as he pulled a handgun from inside his jacket and pointed it at me. He stood there like that for a couple of seconds, the shadows on his face changing with the flickering firelight. He cocked the gun and shot the tires out on the cop car behind me. He quickly hopped into the only other cop car that wasn't on fire and sped off towards the harbor. Yeah, right. Like I was going to follow him. 


End file.
